Tea
Tea has been the beverage of choice in China for hundreds of years. There
is evidence that tea drinking was popular in the 8th century and that
its use spread to Russia and Western Asia as the Mongol empire expanded
from the Balkans to China in the 13th and 14th centuries.

By the 1600s,
seafaring and European trade activities made tea well established throughout
Europe and the English colonists introduced it to America. The use of
tea as a commercial trade item probably began with heavy demand for fine
Chinese tea from the Russian nobility. At first, dried leaves were transported
from China to Russia by caravans of camels over the treacherous Silk Route,
but maritime links established through the South China Sea facillitated
easy and dependable transport of tea to Europe.